Surrender is Stronger
by Sarah Rose Serena
Summary: Zoë is not exactly your average teenager. Granted, a term like average has a new meaning in the New World, but she doesn't fit that one either. And she is about to take troubled Ben Mason on the ride of his life. Or at least a wild detour. Either way, she's sure it will be fun. And either way, he's sure it will lead to disaster. But he is helpless against her. Or so she thinks.
1. Day I

**_Surrender is Stronger_**

a _Falling Skies_ story

* * *

There is something frightening about her. Beyond all rhyme or reason because she is a spritely thing with a gentle touch and kind eyes. The epitome of wholly unthreatening. Yet there is something inscrutably _off_ about her as well. Inhuman. Unearthly. In a way that is entirely unexplainable. Intangible even. It pricks at his hyper sensitized senses. Whispering primitive warnings to his brain. _Danger. Danger._ And she _is_ dangerous. This knowledge he is certain of. He just can't figure out _how_.

Also? She is beautiful. _Stunning_. Quite like nothing he has ever laid eyes on before in his admittedly short life so far. She gets under his skin at first glance. Stirs up his senses into an inexplicable frenzy.

The mystifying beauty catches his eye in an instant from across the dark distance. She is not the one he wants. But she catches his eye—gets him involved—and that is _vital_ in its eventual importance.

As he prowls silently through the shadows, she is gliding with lazy liquid grace along, as if she has all the time in the world and is willing to waste it graciously, a sweet voice humming softly as she goes. The sound sends shivers of unsettling pleasure up his spine. Everything about her is angelic. Her low dulcet melody. Her heart-shaped fine features. The bright silvery eyes glimmering in the darkness. The slim rawboned figure wrapped in sweeping skirts and bell sleeves. She exudes a natural serenity, a compelling presence, strangely angelic and so very alluring.

That in and of itself lends an innate frisson of total _wrongness_. Enough so to worry. Enough to wake the dormant beast of a thing that lurks at deep depths inside him now. It's a monster. The monster his parents used to chase out from under his bed as a child. Not her. _Well, maybe her too_. That scary unformed _unknown_ threat yet to show itself, it's _him_ now. Inside him. A part of him. An integral piece of the puzzle that is Ben Mason ever since the world went to hell.

Ever since ET took over.

The thing that is him yet isn't keeps itself buried beneath the surface at most times. He can control it. _Well, maybe _repress_ is a better word for what he can do_. Sometimes, though, he lets it out. Sometimes, he listens when it calls for release.

And it sure is calling now. At the sight of the eerie woman lingering beside fringes of the shadowed wilderness under a waning moon, it howls for him to _pay attention_. Wary, he loosens the reins on that darker primitive part of his being, waits and watches to _see_. Depending on the probable outcome, once such a thing is predictable, he may let it do as it will. Sometimes, his monster knows best.

Not even the cool calculating monster could anticipate what comes next.

"Halt!" Abruptly, his woodland sprite is a sleek sentry with fire blazing in her eyes. When she finally senses the others, hears their heavy tromping through the underbrush, she surges to her feet from where she has crouched to pick at wildflowers. There is none of the gentle apparition left. "You are trespassing on our land. Show yourselves."

_Who says halt like that?_ the boy beyond the beast can't help but wonder.

"Take it easy, lady." The smooth baritone of his brother's voice reaches his ears even at such a distance away spoken so low. Enhanced senses come in awful handy. His eyes pick up almost every minute detail of the young man who steps up into the moonlight. In grungy layers of fatigues and a nasty assault rifle slung across his shoulder, Hal eases from the thicket of woods and into the valley between the wild and the urban rundown of deserted Ellicott City. Or _not_ so deserted.

The woman closes her fists by her skirts. Grits her teeth. "You should not _be_ here."

At his older brother's back is the roughened Margaret. Her gloved hands have fallen with deceptive idleness on her own automatic weapon where it hangs at her abdomen. "We don't want any trouble."

"If you do not remove yourselves from our land, you will surely have it."

"Our?" comes from Hal, his brow raised, watchful gaze absorbing the perimeter even as it never leaves the peculiar stranger.

Impatient young Ben itches to approach, just venture closer a little, but the monster keeps him hanging back at a detached distance, as has become his protocol these days. Not long ago, he said goodbye to his family, his father and two brothers, knowing that to stay by their sides would be unwise. Yet on the road on his own, he didn't get very far. Instinct drove him backwards. He has better things to do. Like tracking down rebels. Joining their efforts. But something pulled him back. So now he follows, watching over his family from afar, keeping them safe, and he is in a better position to do so this way. Getting involved only mucked up the waters. Confused him. Made him spin.

Hanging back lets him see clearly. From every angle.

"_Gemma_?" a new voice seems to call on the wind.

His brother and backup do not react. They don't hear it. But the woman stiffens up. Her slight body turns as if to accept a second presence. Ben cocks his head to the side, listening for another sound carried on the whispering breeze, but nothing comes at all, not at first.

"_Gem. Answer me. What is going on_?"

"Where the hell is that coming from?" a mutter slips from his lips before the boy can bite his tongue. The bewildered frustration has shaken the beast's concentration now. There are no radio waves carving currents in the air. No bioelectric signals being sent. The shimmery blouse she wears is almost translucent and he can see clearly there is not a damn thing hooked into her spinal column. She hasn't been harnessed. Not like him. This is something else. This is _different_.

The golden red sheets of hair falling to her waist ripple as she twists to accommodate whatever new addition is fast advancing from the west, from the gritty empty city blocks that creep outwards all the way to the dipping valley they occupy almost, and the pair of 2nd Mass scouts seem oblivious.

"Are you out here on your own?" his brother wants to know, taking a cautious step, but the stranger takes it for a hostile question.

So liquid quick even Ben's enhanced eyes miss it, her left fist unfurls with a snap, fingers falling open to fit against the curved crossguard of a dagger and thrusts upward with her elbow. A blade gleams in blue moonlight before it embeds in the bark of an elm right behind his brother. It would have embedded into Hal's shoulder had his Margaret not shoved him down below its arc.

A nanosecond later and two steady rifles are up and aimed, firing at the blurred wisp of motion that must be their quarry, but she started moving the moment the dagger left her hand. She moves ... _fast_. So faster than Ben. Still, bullets have a speed all their own, and they would have inevitably clipped her, he thinks, if not for the whirlwind of fury in her unseen companion disrupting their counterattack.

By the time his brother hits the ground, crumples like a discarded ragdoll after a beat of dizzying combat, Ben is already on the move, eating distance on a jolt of adrenaline. He hits the newcomer without slowing down, too late to keep Margaret from knocking headfirst into the elm and collapsing atop his brother, both disarmed and unconscious. The redhead and her treacherous flying knives are gone from his mind the second he has his arms full of her protector.

Within the span of a heartbeat, acute senses attuned, he realizes several key things, assessing facts and perceptions all in that cool calculating monster way the apathetic animal inside is apt to do.

The first fact he registers is the body pinned beneath his own is deceptively delicate, interestingly breakable, and undeniably feminine, but so very furious. Blazing blue eyes sparkle like sapphires as they glare. Lush loose curls of ebony halo a darkly exotic face. Olive skin like the Mediterranean. A stark sort of stunning that takes his breath away for a pivotal second or so. Makes him freeze in shock for no good reason. Least no sane one. Not just the boy but the beast. An electric zing of alarming sensation rocks through him. The blindingly pissed scowl on that pretty face melts with a startled openness as it does, telling him it was not a one-sided experience, but his prey recovers a split second sooner than his monster.

A knee swings up into his ribcage, rest of her body rolling to the side for momentum to put behind it, paired with an elbow to the jaw to dislodge him from advantage. Just as he gives her an inch, she plants a sole against his chest and thrusts him backwards onto his feet to meet a fresh advance, flipping upright herself in practically the same motion she lunges forward.

If the boy had been in control and not the beast of him, he would have been a beat too late to dodge the slash of a sharp blade across his chest. Instead, he slants back from her range with that empty emotionless expression always unnerving the ones he loves. The calm almost mockingly amused gleam in his eyes as he observes his target.

Somehow, she has small competent hands wrapped around twin daggers as she goes in for the kill. She advances, swings and thrusts and slices and jabs, meeting every one of his counters evenly as he dances with ease around her, avoiding her stinging strikes. Finally, she gets close, a new kind of anger, of frustration burning her hotter and hotter, one that has nothing to do with protective rage this time and everything to do with ego. As close as she gets, he has to take her wrist and twist it outward from its incoming path, wrenching the joint enough to change direction of her blade so it just barely scrapes over his hip. This brings their bodies into a stumbling collision. Using such proximity well, she bites down against the pain singing up her arm and follows it inward, flush against the rigid muscle wall of the boy, and overhands her second blade. When he catches it, twirling her around so her arms crisscross her chest and her back smacks against him, she steals his momentum and throws her body double over ahead, ramming her heel up into his stomach hard enough to send him staggering.

Freed, she whirls back around to face him, both daggers lost, and finds herself being tackled to the ground again, pinned beneath a superior form by sheer brute strength. Thrashing wildly, she gives a breathy yowl of infuriation but skill won't break her free as he cinches bruising fingers around already sore wrists and binds them above her head. Their chests heave violently together, eyes flaring and cheeks flushed, soft lips parted. Pausing her writhing protest, she arches her spine, bowing her body precisely the way she means to from beneath him, upper back pressing deeper into the dewy earth while her lower back raises off it, hips jutting up against him purposefully.

_A male is male_, she knows, _prone to masculine weaknesses, _regardless of the odd and instigating look of predatory perceptiveness in those moss eyes.

Sure enough, he freezes up in shock, and some sound escapes his throat that would be a particularly embarrassing yelp if not so rough and low as a pained groan. Her hands are fixed overhead, arms made useless by unmatched muscle, but her legs are unbound. Rather than give into a petty foolish impulse to thrust her knee up as hard as possible, she takes a subtler approach. Untangled, one long leg slides between his, curving high, and grazes gently along either side of his inner thighs. This time, she earns not a groan, but watches his Adam's apple quaver as he swallows hard and his pupils dilate.

_Ah, yes. Teenagers are practically putty to womanly wiles when wielded properly_, she thinks, and is suddenly glad of her sultry sisters and all of their incessant chattering. This is a useful weapon. Like her daggers.

The slow smug lilt of premature victory on her lips makes his wide gaze narrow with a decidedly dangerous warning. She has forced her body to soften and unclench itself underneath him, gone passive in supposed surrender, but this look gets her pulse racing. There is something _different_ about the boy. He is unlike the rest of them she has met. The quiet stillness about him is almost ... animalistic. Certainly not average.

_This will backfire._

So her body reverts to wildness, ignoring her commands, bucking against him again. Her head snaps up to catch his brow but pulls back a second later, knowing his skull is harder than hers, and instead curves below his jaw to sink her teeth into his shoulder. Simultaneously, she turns her hands in on themselves, wrists moving within his grasp, before she bends herself, knees lifting and elbows throwing up at his nose together to force him to back off enough to release her arms.

"Would you just stay still? Calm down." The words are orders, strong, authoritative, his voice a soft growl pitched low and luring. He doesn't let go, but his hold on her does begin to loosen, so she subsides. Or lets him think so. "Give me a chance to—"

Her knees are propped against his ribs, unpinned between his body and the ground, so her legs are free to swing up past his shoulders and hook around his neck, cutting off his negotiations attempt, a limber vicious pixie using cinched thighs and locked ankles in lethal leverage to try to suffocate him into submission.

The bruising fingers circling her wrists unwind to grip her thighs, trying to wedge in, but she catches his arm in the crook of her elbow and twists his wrist the opposite way, trapping him in a tricky joint lock. With his free hand, he slaps the foliage by her head, levering himself off it, and she tightens the web of her legs, dragging him back down with a shared grunt of impact.

Looking up at him below a fringe of thick black lashes, her sapphire orbs shine with something like humor and intrigue. It almost seems as if she is starting to have some fun as she wets her lips and grins. The pressure on his airway eases just long enough for him to suck in a huge lungful. She is out of breath and blushing but the husky honeysuckle of her voice is flippant and flirty, as if not currently grappled in a session of vitriol violence, when she quips, "Never thought to see the day I'd have a dreamy blond between my legs. Usually, I'm typed towards the dark ones."

There is no way she is much more than sixteen or so. But she sure is something else. Instead of expressing the absurdly inappropriate boyish wonder she has him struck by, Ben digs his fingers into the earth on either side of the girl, gritting out a strangled scoff. "You're a piece of work."

Smartly, she retorts, "Thanks a bunch, pretty boy."

Getting his knees under him, he hoists onto his haunches, carrying her up and over as his back hits ground in a stab at shaking her off. It does not work but leaves him with a better angle to pry loose. Because she didn't expect the switch, she isn't prepared to be on top and doesn't adjust the clasp of her legs in time to counteract the force of his strike when he shoves his forearms into the apex of her thighs and pushes outward with them, spreading her legs too wide towards her hips to hang onto his shoulders with her calves as he bolts upright, flinging her onto her back between his boots.

Now possessing a healthy wariness, he seizes the opportunity of her brief hesitation, wind knocked from her sails, and rises quick to retreat a few paces. On his feet, he takes a defensive stance in front of his unresponsive brother and goes for the silvered pistol tucked into the waistband at the small of his back at the same time she vaults overhead to come up into an agile hunkered crouch, some sleek majestic panther ready to pounce, and his beast responds to the impression with worrying vehemence.

Those startling sapphire eyes have gotten cold and intent, watching him closely now, and at the sight of the gun her lips pull back a bit from white teeth in some mix between a snarl and a smirk. Luscious layers of messy black curls ripple around her movements, falling near to her elbows, framing her face. Dressed in dark knit leggings and a tight top under cropped leather jacket, she _should_ look like your average casual chic teenage girl. The rich red of the shirt compliments the hue of her caramel skin. In fact, her clothes are suspiciously average, nice and clean and new, no holes worn in or tears or soiled stains. It doesn't look like she has survived an apocalypse, like everyone else left in this world, but as if she has somehow managed to remain untouched by the spreading darkness. Hell, a pair of metallic hoops glint in the moonshine as they swing softly from her ears in knots of inky hair. Odd as it is, she _should_ seem perfectly ordinary, besides her beauty. Except she dances with daggers and doles out sharp judo maneuvers with playful smiles. And now she crouches, at one with the animal inside of her, waiting to be dominated, wired and willing to nix his next attempt to do so.

Staring straight at him, not the weapon he holds in a stern two-handed grip and has aimed at her heart, she lets the guttural twist of her mouth morph into a teasing pout, half amused, half angry, and says softly, "Cheater."

Ben has to suppress the shudder of reaction as a thrill rocks through his darker parts, primitive parts, triggered at the scary sight of her there like a wicked wonderful wildling. His heart picks up speed, slowly but surely, a heady pounding in his head and his chest, making him throb in discomfort to the point of pain. All his nerve endings are burning. After a moment, she cants her head to the side, reminiscent of a wolf at observing him, seemingly seeing right through him to the core. He swallows thickly. His fingers feel like thick clumsy appendages as they grip the gun. The deadly metal is supposed to feel like an extension of his hand. It normally does. But not now. Not with her watching him so. Vivid gypsy eyes study his face, spending time on every facet of his pale taut features, leaving him horribly breathless.

And indecisive.

The girl sees it. Senses it. Will use it to her advantage.

"Take all the time you need, pretty boy." Her voice is a low pitched purr but her gaze is gauging him with ruthless calculation. "I'm in no hurry."

Letting out a long hiss of breath, he struggles to summon some resolve, some sort of forward progressing volition, but all there is that lingers is admiration, acute curiosity, maybe a little attraction. As full lips compress into a grim line, he flexes fingers on steel, shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Behind him, his brother stirs the slightest, gives a groggy groan. Fresh certainty steadying him, Ben transfers the pistol to one hand and starts to turn, keeping it on the sneakily hostile gypsy girl.

"Hal?"

Then something blunt comes down on the crown of his skull and it is lights out for Ben Mason.

* * *

**TBC**


	2. Day II

**Day 2**

* * *

When he wakes, awareness sifts sluggishly back to him in dark disjointed glimpses. One of the first things to make it through the forgotten fog, aside from the dull aching of his pained state, happens to be a soothing ebb and flow of frosty feminine voices echoing all around him in his shadowy abyss. The second is that he appears to be stretched out on a narrow strip of vinyl cushion with a built-in elevated headrest. Which is strange to find himself asleep on when all he has known in this new world is a hard floor or a cot. No, not asleep. _Unconscious_. And this is not a bed but an exam table.

"—know perfectly well what I'm insinuating."

"You will have to spell it out for me, child. I cannot possibly be interpreting you right. There is no way you mean to take him with us."

"I do."

The moan that succinct reply earns is rife with a long-suffering kind of exasperation. "You have lost your mind. I know your sisters are fond of taking in strays but I thought for certain you were more sensible than _that_. What is the purpose of this whim?"

"Color me intrigued." The shrug paired with such a statement is obvious in her tone. "Let us just say he has caught my fancy and leave it at that, shall we? I think our uncle will appreciate my find."

"The boy could have killed you."

"Ah, _could have_ being the operative words. He didn't. And you know how rare it is to come across someone who _could have_ killed me. Especially one so young. I am loath to let this one go so soon." Then, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "I've got good vibes about this one, Gem."

"Despite ample contrary evidence, you are not infallible, my little one."

Breezily, she counters, "Oh, I know that. I get felled all the time." Saucily, she adds, "But I _am_ all-knowing."

"_Oy_. What am I to do with you, _mi copil sălbatic_?"

Knowing how to gather any scrap of advantage he can, Ben keeps his eyes closed and his breathing even, mimicking sleep until he hears the soft _snick_ of a door closing before the vibrations pattern of footfalls fade. He knows better than to think he is alone now. He can still hear her heartbeat if he looks for it. The heady two thump rhythm of his own syncing to hers as he lays and listens. But she must not be intending to leave him alone. So he doesn't bother carrying on the charade.

Morning has come. From the position of the sun streaming in through sheer drapes over wide oriel windows along one peach papered wall, it is early still. Just past dawn. And it isn't an exam beneath him but a massage table. Because he is in a massage parlor. Of all places. Everything is painted in pastels, making the room light and bright and soft, washed out oak fixtures in corners full of various burnt candles and aromatherapy jars, one of those white shōji screens dividing off an eastern section. Accustomed to slums, since the whole world is a slum these days, waking up in a place so frilly and preserved is more than a little disconcerting. It gives him a good jolt that has him swinging upright, which kills his head, so he grips it in his hands as he eases back down.

He groans in complaint. "What did you hit me with? A sledgehammer?"

When he slits his eyes sideways, she smiles. "That wasn't me. That was Gemma."

"Great."

The girl huffs but he can tell it is for show. "Well. Someone isn't a lively riser."

"Maybe if I didn't have a concussion—"

"You'll heal." The interjection is an airy dismissal of concern for his grievous injury. This time, he gets his eyes open enough to glare at her and is able to make out more than just a blurry silhouette of his raven-haired albatross across the room. On another table, she perches neatly, jacket tied around her hips, exposing a slender set of bare shoulders, her legs folded in front of her Indian style, feet bared too because her boots sit beneath. That lush mane of curls is corralled into a sloppy bun high on her head, making her look ironically intimate, like a simple sassy girl just hanging around the house. It would seem she isn't paying any attention to him, busy polishing her manicured fingernails the same shade of deep blue as her irises, but appearances are deceiving. "If you're reaching there for your backup firearm, it won't be waiting for you."

The hand making its way towards his denim-clad calf pauses midway. With a glance at the girl, completely at ease, almost condescendingly so, he lurches upright again and digs under the leg of his jeans to find the emergency revolver he holsters there is gone. His own muddy boots have been discarded at the foot of the table, leaving him socked, and his coat and henley are both hanging off a hook at the edge. Not only has he been stripped of all his weapons but also his higher half of clothing. The baggy denim pants are unbuttoned, unzipped, slung low and lazily on his narrow hips, but the dagger gash cutting into pale flesh beside the jut of his hipbone has been patched by a clean bandage, so he doesn't mention his state of undress.

Instead, he demands his guns back, his voice hard and cold with the inner monster, dispelling any softness that might linger from the disoriented diversion.

Unbothered, she drawls, "Don't stress it, soldier. You'll get your toys back."

Feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious, Ben puts that battle on the backburner to grab his faded grey shirt from the edge and tug it hurriedly over his head, pulling low to his waist, covering his spine before he swings his legs off the table and twists to face her. Soon as his back is hidden, muscles of his shoulders unbunch a bit and he breathes away a sharp sigh.

"By the way?" The smooth stroke of an enamel brush pauses as she purses her lips, slick with clear gloss, and scrolls ethereal eyes to fix sharply on him. "You're forgiven." The gaze is so vivid, so intense, it burns into him, scorching his insides from one nerve to the next. Only the slight upturn at the corners of her mouth softens the dizzy effect. "Gem explained. I know now she overreacted to your friends."

"You think?"

There is a brief glimpse then of a sheepish expression but it disappears just as quick, replaced by remote indifference, her pretty European features halcyon, indecipherable, and he is left thinking he imagined it.

"My mother gets a tad temperamental about territory at times." She simply shrugs. _No big deal._ And with a crooked grin, she adds, "About uninvited guests and whatnot." But his brain is stuck on _mother_. Because no way is the redheaded sprite aged enough to have mothered the gypsy girl.

While he sits and stews, made patient by the beast, collecting bits and pieces of info in his mind, fitting a big picture that makes no sense, she resumes her languid grooming and begins spinning a web of either truth or lies, he can't tell, yet either way it is smooth, effortless with an odd charm. Lightly, without a care in the world, she claims the woman was out foraging for supplies to restock her cache of herbal remedies when those scouts of his happened across her. Granted, she handled the unexpected interruption with less poise than she could have, but they were just so _rude_, Gemma insisted to her daughter, who appears familiarly exasperated by having to clean up after her mercurial mother. The girl knows Gem wasn't actually accosted by the patrol from the 2nd Mass convoy. But how was she to know that then? And, regardless of the instigator to blame, they _had_ opened fire. Since no one was seriously hurt, however, she is willing to let bygones be. She informs him of this with a dark saccharine cadence then offers up a brilliant smile to convey just how gracious she can be.

If distrust wasn't riding him hard, Ben might give into the warm urge for laughter. Instead, he pushes off the table with his palms, lets his heels hit the cool hardwood floor. His tone stays neutral as he says, "You aren't militia." That fact is glaringly obvious now. "How do you know so much about the Second Mass regiment?"

Having finished her hands, she unfolds a long lethal leg and brings it up to her chest, propping her sole on the table edge and her chin on her knee to get to work on her toes. The brush strikes blue over her nails in quick efficient lashes of motion as she pretends it takes the majority of her focus when he knows it doesn't. "I know lots of things."

Keeping wary eyes on her, he bends to snatch up his removed boots. "Such as?"

"Examples. Hm. Well, firstly, I also know you have been following their assembly for the last weeks at a discreet distance to watch over your own incognito like." A sharp gaze peers across at him through thick fluttery lashes. "Which tells me something about you, Benjamin Mason."

The boy stiffens. "How?"

As she runs keen crystalline eyes over him, she lessens the intensity of her attention with an easy shrug and a soft hum of sound. There is an awareness beneath her apathy. She recognizes danger in that sudden stillness of his lean sinewy body. So she explains, "Gem told me. She learns stuff. It's her thing."

Which does nothing to assuage his suspicion. "Where are the others?"

"Your brother and his woman have returned to their camp." Then, at his lifted brow, "You can imagine after being soundly thrashed, waking alone in the trees with no decent explanation as to what just happened, they likely thought it the best option."

"You left them there. Why take me?"

This makes her falter. Moving in precise spaces now, she colors the last nail of a set before dropping the brush back into its bottle. As she does, all of the bracelets that cuff her gold forearms jingle like wind chimes, dozens of copper and silver bangles dancing. The soft sound draws his stare for a second. Then her throat works, swallowing thickly as she pieces her thoughts and emotions into place, and his stare shifts upwards to see it strain against the black cord of thread tied at the curving base of that elegant column. When he reaches her face, she cants her head cutely with purpose and gives a sly smirk. _Oh, man. _That look means she knows things too. Things she shouldn't rightly know. Means she sees things she shouldn't be seeing. And just like that she has turned around her moment of being off balance. Shoved it onto _him_.

He resituates himself at the edge of his table, realizes his boots have now slipped free from fingers gone nerveless, and resists the weird pull of her presence, almost magnetic in nature. He struggles to wrench his gaze away. To fix it on something else in the room, something impersonal, but it keeps straying back to her despite his will.

The vividness of big blue eyes rimmed by natural kohl and lash. The sun-kissed skin. The slight wabi-sabi shape of a rose mouth. The sweet slender swell of curves. The riches of loose illustrious curls in myriad midnight shades. The sleek feline grace of movement. The lazy humor. The brazen teasing. The playful attitude. The underlying seriousness to her witticisms. The mildly devious slant to her sultry sensuality seeping from every pore. The strange exotic danger lurking beneath the veneer of a beautiful girl.

Never before has he been so acutely aware of another person.

Maybe it is because he has had her under him, against him, felt the press of her body along his own, and is so starved for basic physical contact it has him near to obsessed. Whatever the reasoning, below the misgivings and confusion and suspicion of his mind, Ben feels himself caught in a web of cradling captivation.

It has both boy and beast thoroughly disconcerted. And that itself is enough excuse to be interested. The last time he cared about anything other than taking down skitters must have been too long ago to matter. The last time his razor focus got distracted from the clarity of his hatred was a momentary respite as it was replaced by grief. This thing is dangerous. This interest. This _fascination_. He shouldn't indulge.

"That jewelry will get you killed."

"I'm not worried."

"You should be."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

The gypsy girl just smiles, secrets sparkling in her eyes, as if she knows something, and she does. The brusquer than usual quality to his voice and gruff responses is almost as telling as his flushed face or the way he ducks his head to shove his feet into his boots with jerky hurried moves. As she watches, she wraps her arms around her leg and grins, letting the other swing over the edge.

"How far into the city are we?"

"We keep to the fringes for supply runs. There is a significant nest towards the core." Still so smug, she waits for him to straighten and meet her stare. "Your people are going to be moving on soon. If you want to stick with them, you'd better get on your way now." Then she hesitates, a knowing glint in sharp sapphire eyes, and moistens her lips before she proposes, "If you want to stay a spell, all you have to do is sit back down."

There is such a disarming earnest lilt to her husky voice and briefly open expression, a soothing and alluring aspect to her bright eyes as they blink up at him in expectance that he ends up freezing again, nearly knocked over by the sudden innate desire to _stay_, a sensation so unexpected, so intense it steals his breath away for a sharp second or so. He doesn't sit, somehow manages to keep on his feet, but he does stumble a step or two, steadying his stance with feet spread wide, standing closer to her side. He breathes deep, forcing himself to concentrate, to shake off the foreign frisson, while she dips her head to watch him from beneath hooded lashes, a patient predator.

Voice rising rough and ragged, Ben shakes his head to try to clear it as he demands, "Where did you come from?"

The pixie tilts her neck in a savvy savage signal. With a hint of challenge, she retorts, "Come with us and you'll know the answer."

Frustration makes his fingers furl into fists and dig into the padded vinyl of her table right beside her left hip. He doesn't register just how close he has gotten until he senses the pulse of her essence. That smooth throbbing rhythm of life spikes all of a sudden as he leans in, broad shoulders corded and hunched, towering above her. When she stills, he reaches out, wrapping bruising fingers around delicate forearm and yanking the limb, forcing her off the edge of table towards him, bringing them a hairsbreadth shy of flush. This one is tall for a girl, and he hasn't quite finished growing, but the angle makes sure she has to tip her chin to level their gazes. As her lips part, a hot shaky breath brushes across his cheek, makes him wanna shiver. The touch is harsh, forceful and demanding, and her face remains a cool curious mask at his quick hard grab, but he _feels_ her nerves flutter anxiously at his penetrating proximity.

Spoken low and heated, he asks the girl, "Who are you?"

"Zoë." The name slips suddenly from her glossed lips, pouted and parted, but she is so easy and open in her answer that it glides like balm over his baser bristled instincts. "Zoëphine Lealla."

The crushing embrace of his vise grip lessens, fingers slackening a bit, and she uses the lax not to break free but to twist her wrist and slip on through his grasp only so far as to level their palms. Then he finds himself in an odd electric clasp of quivering hands, her ocean breeze temperature a shock to his system as it presses at his overheated skin in a loose interpretation of a formal handshake.

Once her touch slides away, leaving him with a worrisome stab of disappointment, Ben forces his feet backwards, one step at a time, moving painstakingly precise back to his own side of the room. Since his eyes never waver from hers, he gets to watch her face open up to him again, like a rosebud blooming, velvet petals unfurling under the sun. The superficial façade of chipper vacuous girl melts into a slow snaking curve of a smile, sapphires sparking alight with genuine delight when he lifts himself back onto the table, reclaiming his seat in hesitant significance.

"For now."

A strict edge laces his voice as he tries to ward off the puerile pleased look of her that does twistingly tight things to him but she merely exaggerates it into a playful beaming at the warning.

With mild mockery, she widens her eyes in a flirty flare and singsongs, "So solemn." And swaggers out of the room.

Grabbing his coat, he is up and after her the next second, regrettably aware of exactly how unarmed he is still. In the lobby of the parlor, he comes up behind her as she stands amid a centre arrangement of expensive luxury furniture gone to ruin by derelict disuse. Because she stops unexpectedly, he ends up nearer than he intended, within just inches. Through the distraction of her closeness, of a heady feminine scent of cherry blossoms, maybe a trickle of jasmine too, he thinks this petite irritating stranger is more unfettered than anyone he has ever met in the New World, likely to the point of perilous detriment, and is about to tell her so in a decidedly uncomplimentary way when she raises an arm to his chest behind her left shoulder, sensing the intake of breath that precedes speech. Since she is obviously alert for what he has missed, he scans his surroundings.

The only thing his inhumanly keen senses register is the warm body before him with her breath held and her expression serious. Until a faint trilling whistle reaches his ears. Coming from somewhere to the west of the compact corner building. No one but the boy would have heard it if he'd still been with the militia. Yet _she_ does. And he is so near her, he knows without a doubt she has never been harnessed.

"Time to go," she says softly, not urgently, and her knuckles brush off his chest when she walks away, expecting him to follow at her heels like a bewitched puppy.

Which he does. _Granted_. But only so far.

At the opaque glass of the front entrance, he snatches her arm and reels her back. Once she dusts a stray lock of hair from her brow and peers up at him past her lashes, Ben lowers his voice to firm and rasps, "My weapons."

"Oh, right." Flashing a scatterbrained smile, she says, "Slipped my mind." Then hefts a small canvas pack she carries and flips the hood flap to dig into and emerge with first his serrated black blade of a dagger and holster then his main silver 9mm Browning HP. After he checks the full magazine and straps both back onto his person, he gives her grin an arch look and gets his backup gun returned as well. With a revolver fitted to his calf, dagger and semiautomatic to his side, he feels slightly on solid ground again. One glance into the girl's gaze, however, and he is upended again. "Satisfied, soldier?"

He just shakes his head in amused dismissal, gesturing sardonically to usher her out the door ahead, and then trails her onto the sidewalk with a slight smile despite himself. The streets are free of clutter. No normal debris in sight. Like the ghost town had simply been abandoned. Left untouched by the ravaging conflicts of an entire eastern seaboard. He follows her languid strides with a more watchful pace of his own, feeling kinda naked without an assault rifle for his hands to cradle, but there is nothing to be alert for here. The nearest commotion his ears pick up is miles away.

"Spent much time in Penn?" she wonders without looking back at her companion. Her husky honeysuckle cadence drawls light and low with lilted syllables to coil at him. The sound slithers up his scarred spine like a caressing cool hand that makes him shiver. And _that_ irritates him. He thought the fresh air and wintry sunshine, as dull as it is now, would help dilute the effect of her presence, would cast off all his nonsensical reactions. "Yo, pretty boy. You still with me?"

"Where are we going?" he asks instead, his tone rubbed gruff as he catches up to her, but never gets an answer because it becomes obvious the next moment when they turn around a blind corner of brick and come into a wide alleyway between barren buildings. "Never mind."

The strip of clean pavement where there should be rancid dumpsters is taken up with a small flatbed caravan hooked to the rear grille of a four-wheeler ATV hulk. The trailer holds wicker baskets overflowing with picked plants and various handheld containers. Nothing that would require a caravan to drag. But there is a cleared space in the flatbed, and the backdoor to the western building is propped open by a stack of cardboard boxes, so he assumes the purpose of it is yet to arrive.

"What?" he deadpans, face blank as he watches her size him up, her fingers banding experimentally along the bulk of his biceps.

Lips pursed, she retorts, "Just making sure."

"Of?"

"Your muscular stature." She is already headed inside when she declares, "You'll do."

And he is close on her heels, delving into darkness, when he counters, "For?"

"To help me haul." She twists around to meet his steel stare with a teasing smirk, sauntering backwards through the shrouded interior of the pub as if she has schematics. "Duh."

The whistle came from the redheaded sprite, he confirms when they weave through into the dusty cobwebbed stockroom to find her waiting impatiently, hands on her hips. Taking one look at the boy, her elfin features harden. "Zo—"

Throwing hands up to fend off a lecture, Zoë interjects, "_Enough_. Let it be."

The sprite huffs. "Fine, child. Have it your way." Brushing past them on her way out, she pauses beside her daughter and holds up a severe finger. "He is _your_ responsibility." And with one final glance of disdain at Ben, she is gone.

"Jeez." The breathy boyish murmur slips from his lips before he can catch himself, scratching at the back of his head in her leftover wake of hostility, but the girl ignores it. "I can't imagine taking that tone with my mom and living to tell about it."

"What tone?" she asks, popping upright from where she'd bent to investigate a crate, genuinely confused now.

"Nothing." Shaking off the painful ache of new nostalgia, Ben ventures deeper inside. "What are we after?"

"Oh, anything that looks like quality spirits."

"Say again?"

The girl is busy unfolding flaps of a top box and digging in to examine the contents, so she misses his skeptical expression, but notes the dry tone of his voice and sighs. "We're running low on wine."

This makes him go rigid in disbelief. "You cannot be serious."

Now she does look over. With a risen brow and bright clear eyes, she insists, "Quite." Then she hoists a small crate of unfermented alcohol into her arms and shoves it at him. "The hard liquor is for special celebrations but you won't want to suffer my sisters when we run dry on wine. Trust me."

"Here I thought you were only part stupid," he drawls, accepting the load she forces on him rather than let the glass bottles shatter on dirty cement. "Turns out you're whole. The noisy jewelry. The nail polish. The obliviousness. Now you're telling me you spend all your time wasted? Got any idea how much this stuff stunts your senses?"

"Do _you_?" she challenges, a sassy smile quirking her lips, more amused than angered by his irritated insults. But when his full pale lips tauten with aggravation, jaw clenched, and his mouth opens to further berate her, she releases another sigh, heavier this time, stacking a second box atop his armload. "First of all, ethanol is put to use in lots of ways. Especially by Gemma. It's a solvent _and_ a fuel. And I don't know so about _your_ people, but _mine_ handle our spirits just fine, so let _us_ worry over our supposed stunted senses." She isn't really angry or bothered, yet there is a fierce fire about her now that stuns him into passivity for a minute, feeling a lot like a chastised schoolboy for no rational reason. "Thirdly, I've gotten fairly competent at taking care of myself and those under my guard, so I see no excuse for neglecting my hygiene when I afford it. And as for the accessories you seem so absurdly acidic about, I'd say I cancel the risk by staying well from range of anyone who might hear me." Then, with an impish grin, "Unless I want them to."

"Oh." It isn't that she has won him over. He still thinks she is ridiculous and reckless. But his brain has gone on break and no other word comes to him.

"You're forgiven again," she assures him, so very magnanimously, and adds amusedly, "This is becoming an awful habit of ours."

"Being at odds? Or you forgiving me for something I don't need to be forgiven for?"

The pixie just smiles sweetly, sending him a provoking tilt of her head, eyes glittering with mischief and pleasure and many more perplexing things that leave him cut adrift. "Take those out to the rest of the cargo, will you?"

"Sure."

"Thanks," she murmurs, sounding strangely seductive in a purring patronizing way. The sound stops him at the threshold, cool hands caressing his spine again, and he looks over his shoulder to watch her hunker into a crouch before a cask of distilled brandies. The tense line of her bared shoulders belies the eternal nonchalance of her expressions. He thinks she isn't actually as effervescent as she appears. There is a sturdier substance hidden somewhere beneath the surface.

Which reassures him. Tethering his bewildered inexplicable awe.

When he returns, she hefts three more crates into his arms and carries a cask herself as she loads him down with a pair of them on his third trip. By the time they are done scavenging the best of the limited selection, her brisk and surly mother has come back from wherever it is she disappeared to and urges them both upstairs to the second story to gather fresh linens from the cozy B&B establishment carved out of the upper levels of the deserted Irish pub.

"So." Her voice is softer than he has heard it so far once she finally chooses a topic to explore while they work short simple tasks, folding up bedding and filling up hampers, emptying out all the linen closets. Her tone is warm. "That's quite a collection."

"What is?"

As she pauses, dropping a sheet into the basket at her feet, she reaches across to him, lays a light touch of fingertips along the vertical row of minor protrusions at the nape of his neck, concealed by a thick olive army jacket and end tips of cropped ash blond hair. Before she actually connects with the metallic bolts in his spinal column, he jerks away. Because she recognizes the wild animal edge in his wide green eyes, she retracts easily, as if uncommitted to the motion.

"I noticed the scars on your back when I was searching for your toys." Her eyes stay fixed on herself, lending him a semblance of privacy, but she senses how stiff he gets as she says it, knows how ultra uncomfortable she has just made the boy. "Relax, kiddo." Canting her head aside, she shoots him a quick sideways look, a faint affectionate twist to her glossed lips, aimed for disarming. Her hands fold deftly and blindly but she keeps her eyes on them nonetheless in an attempt to lessen his discomfort. "You aren't the first I've run into that spent time with a hive."

He has gone still as a statue, ashen as a ghost, staring stark with those marked moss fathomless orbs, those eyes urging her to elaborate even as his boyish face remains stoic, so she is moved to oblige.

"We've a few at home in fact. Ones that have endured being harnessed and removed. Cut off from the hive. Yet _not_. They say just because the harness is gone and you're freed doesn't mean it is over. They say that their links to the collective are never fully severed. They say the connection is always there. Dormant on most days. They say lots of things." She quiets for a beat, observing him intently in her periphery, before she gently inquires, "That is how it is for you too?"

"Yes." He admits it automatically, curt and cursed, going gruff again at the question. There is no ulterior motive to her. She is simply curious. He is certain of it. So he trusts his instincts and doesn't curtail his more selfish and less smart stirred impulses.

"Mason?" she calls, as if he has gone somewhere far away from her reach, as he turns to face her and take her chin in his hand, forcing her to step into him as he lifts her head high enough to study her fine Roma features in serious search of something. In the ether of energy currents around them, he feels the undulating patterns of electric wavelengths, absorbs them into himself and sorts them out, looking for the ones that correlate to her, sending them arcing back to see how they respond, and how she reacts.

_Nothing_.

The currents skate into her, thriving through her bioelectrical system, and return to the ether recharged, but she only accepts them on an organic level, not a conscious one. Unless she understands the natural mechanics better than he does and can deceive him, he doesn't think she can manipulate the currents like he can.

After a long stifling moment of silence, she swallows, blinks bold blue eyes up at him, and quips a breathy whisper, "Can I help you with something?"

"You aren't like me."

"No."

"You aren't normal either."

Zoë smiles. An indulgent lazy lilt of lips. "Depends on what you call normal."

Abruptly, he is just a boy again, not a primitive predatory bundle of instinctive urges. And he is all too aware of the position he finds himself in, gripping a beautiful creature he has no understanding of by the jaw, standing close enough to share her cool breath, to feel her pulse radiate under her skin. Knows if he were to shift himself in a mere inch, he could close the gap and steal her lips. Wonders if she would be warm and willing for his insane pursuit. The darker sharper colder animal part of him would have gone for it. But the boy is back in control, intensely chagrinned, so he shoves the fervid fantasies in his addled brain away and bites down on the liquid heat of desire before his hormones get the better of him. In his rush to disengage, he releases her rougher than he intends, making her catch herself with a hand to the closet doorframe to stabilize her balance as he jostles past her to gain space.

_Get a grip, you fool._

The gypsy girl draws in a deep breath to brace her nerves before she slowly rotates. He has stopped at the end of the narrow hall, his palms bracketing either side of a frame while his broad shoulders bunch, and her fingers itch to smooth those knotted muscles, so she furls them into fists to resist, knowing he wouldn't be receptive to easy touches. Few humans are. Instead, she keeps her feet fixed where he left her and slides her eyes beyond the rigid shape of him there in the open doorway until they land on the interior. The room is sparse but what is there is designed for comfort and efficiency. A big bed. Nicely made. Not gone to rot yet. Her gaze gravitates back to her conflicted companion. Then she takes a step forward.

"We should utilize the intact inn."

"Huh?" he replies, features taut, eyelids shut, head still hung.

"My people are of the mind to not let much go to waste," she tells him with a sly grin, coming up beside the boy to lean back against the jamb, arms folded across her chest, leather jacket slung ever lower on the subtle flare of her hips. "When is the last time you slept in an actual bed?"

Raising his head, Ben twists it torturously slow to the side to meet her vivid focus. Once he registers her meaning, he glances in at the rental room and back at the pixie with a blank look. "I ... don't remember."

"Then you should definitely take advantage."

"Irrelevant," he returns evenly, "I don't sleep."

"That so?" she counters with a cool calculated countenance.

Unable to ignore the head tilt, he lets his arms drop from the frame and turns to her, leaning back against the opposite jamb, mimicking her posture. He doesn't say a word. But his eyes speak volumes.

"You sure _look_ tired," she murmurs, and her cadence has gotten dangerously silken, "I wonder what you have against R and R?"

His shoulders shift in a soft shrug. "Just doesn't work for me."

"Odd."

"It is."

"Wonder if I can help," she says after a thoughtful second, directed mostly at herself, before she pushes from the jamb and slants across the meager distance between them. Slowed by patience, she moves in but gives him plenty of time to consider evading her. Instead, he freezes, going pliant while a gentle hand strokes his cheek, chill to feverish in shocking contrast, somehow still soothing even as it startles.

He stopped sleeping months ago. Trying has been useless since he was unharnessed, but he'd kept at it for the sake of his father and his brothers, could see the need they had to believe he was the same son who'd been taken away. But there came a point he had to just accept that _that_ Ben was gone. Giving up sleep was the first step. He doesn't need it. Usually doesn't feel any adverse affects from lack of it.

Now is different.

Something about the presence of this strange stranger has consequences of running himself ragged into the ground catching up to him. Something about that sweet touch. Like it unlocked the stone wall dividing boy and beast and broke the repressed reserve of his human weaknesses.

With one simple scintillating caress, she awakens his exhaustion.

"Gem won't be ready to get outta here for another few hours at least," she tells him as she pulls away, leaving him bereft without the contact, even as the welcoming warmth of blissful unconscious digs soft but strong claws into him, pulling him towards a darkness. He'd be alarmed if it wasn't such a familiar sensation, such a missed one, so he submits. And as his eyes drift closed, body swaying against the frame, husky honeysuckle hums in his ears, "I've got guard until then."

He makes some sort of sound to acknowledge her but it is nothing especially distinct. His boots are heavy as they lead him into the empty room. He collapses to the mattress. Relief consumes him and it is practically divine.

On the edge of the appealing abyss of oblivion, he senses the gypsy girl burying him beneath layers of bedding, her long graceful fingers sifting lightly through his short hair. In the vaguest fashion, he hears her murmur, "Get some rest, soldier."

Against all rational reason, all semblances of sanity, he does exactly as she asks.

* * *

**TBC**


	3. Day III

**Day 3**

* * *

_Bewitched_. That's what he is. It has to be. Nothing else explains his erratic behavior. Reckless to the point of _stupid_. There are aliens after all. Why not witches? That touch. She put him to sleep. Like magic. Like a spell. Or the more logical assumption of her act, which is hypnosis, no matter how weak he finds blaming the power of skilled suggestion. But she isn't a witch. _Zoëphine_. And her unpleasant youthful sprite of a mother.

Not a witch. But _something_ for certain.

_Gypsies_, his beast intones. Yes. That's it. Must be. To find them here in New England is almost as strange as the presence of extraterrestrial invaders. But that has got to be it. Except gypsies are just a culture. Heritage cannot explain her ... eccentricities.

The grey day has become a biting dusk by the time the boy surfaces feeling rested but alarmingly disoriented in these unfamiliar surroundings. It takes anxious moments for his focus to sharpen. When he comes down, he half expects recent events to have been all a bizarre dream. He would say that can't be it because he doesn't sleep. But _obviously_ he was wrong. Maybe a hallucination? He tries to remember what it was he was doing when it first began. Comes up with nothing noteworthy.

A dream then.

There are deep twinges of disappointment ready to awaken should that be the case. They never need to bloom. Instead of finding himself stranded alone in a desolate city, he finds Zoë just as he'd imagined.

Too real. Too baffling to have been dreamed up by _his_ tired mind.

The girl emerges from the fringe of wilderness off beyond the strip of brick buildings only a few seconds after he steps out into the alleyway to find it empty save for the ATV. With the watery sun dipping down and the slate clouds having scattered for faded stars, winter winds are stirring up, getting ready to howl through the night. The chill in the air is frosting over everything tangible. Though she hadn't seemed so bothered by the cold this morning, striding out in a skimpy tank top, she has her jacket zipped up tight now, massive midnight mane of tousled curls spilling over the glossy leather.

He stands at a corner of the caravan, putting his back to the front mouth of the alley that opens to the street as he watches her glide through the small field of tall wild grass between the alley rear end and the tree line. It isn't until she breaks free of the meadow that he notices she's dragging an animal carcass behind her by the hind leg. Transfixed, he doesn't move to help, just stays frozen as she crosses the distance and hoists her kill onto an unrolled tarp atop the flatbed.

With a huff of exertion, her chest rising quicker than usual, her tawny skin flushed, she wipes bloody hands on her leggings before she swings a simplistic recurve bow off one shoulder, a quiver of arrows off another, and tosses them into a basket of projectiles. Her mother must have moved on from gathering herbs while he slept.

"You killed a deer?"

"Elk actually." Clapping her knees, she pivots onto the rusty rail of the flatbed trailer to pose in a wildcat crouch while she wraps and straps the corpse between two stacks of alcoholic stock. As she catches his indecipherable stare, she mistakes his musing mood, bristles into defensive. "It was a righteous kill," she snaps, stroking a reverent hand over the patch of coarse fur peeking out of the tarp before she cinches it. "She lived a long life. All her offspring are grown."

_What odd creatures_, he thinks, watching the gypsy girl with a darkly attentive gaze. The fingerless gloves covering his hands itch at his skin while he fastens his coat closed. When he finally decides on what to say to her, his voice is soft and smooth and neutral. "Thought you were on watch."

"I can multitask."

_I'll bet_. All he retorts is, "Wouldn't have taken you for a hunter."

"No?" When she flashes white teeth at him with a pointed bite, he realizes that isn't entirely accurate of him to say. There is something innately predatory in her every move. A lethal lioness. Even with that mischief innocence of a glint in startling sapphire eyes. Because he doesn't take her bait, she shrugs him off, leaps nimbly off the rail to brush by with a breathless smile and teasing sweep of shoulder contact. Like magnetic direction, he angles around to watch her go, watch her stop at the edge of the street and put fingers to her lips and let out a sharp lyrical whistle that echoes dangerously through the block. Then she spins, not waiting for a response, and asks him, "Ready to see the hill?"

Ben frowns. "What hill?"

"Our hill," comes a clear lilted voice laced with enmity from his right a beat before the unfriendly redhead rounds the corner on the opposite end, sandwiching him inside from both escape routes. Those frosty crystalline eyes sear him with serious superiority. "And _this one_ is not invited."

To which her daughter heaves a huff of impatience, rolling her eyes, waving her off. "Yes, he is. Get over it."

Rather than subside this time, Gemma becomes incensed. "Curse it all, Zoëphine! Even after all the trouble his people have caused, you still wish to drag this misfit boy into our sanctuary?"

"What?" he cuts in. Turning his attention solely onto Zoë, he pins her with one look, piercing and urgent at the mention of his family.

"No worries." She is casual and reassuring at once. "Your brother returned while you were sleeping along with others to sweep the area. There was an altercation."

"They attacked me! That's _twice_ now."

"They did not attack you." Again, she rolls her eyes, all indulgent and unconcerned. To the boy, she insists, "There was no violence during this bout. I intervened in time to sort things out and your comrades went on their way." Back to her mercurial mother, "You are overreacting as usual. Your irritation with the patrollers shouldn't be projected onto Mason anyhow." Then, slanting her body weight onto one heel and jutting one hip, arms folded, brow high, she drawls, "Now can we get on?"

Gem spares a second to cast the impassive boy a last glare before she whirls around. "Come then."

Because he is distracted trying to follow the path of the redhead as she flits off across the meadow in a breezy ripple of swishing gauze fabric, it takes a low playful whistle from the girl to draw his focus. Once his gaze lands on her over the barricade of cargo, she flashes a grin and tosses a set of keys into the air. Reflex has him catch them quick, one hand darting out to snatch them up, before he sends her a quizzical look. To which she merely nods towards the ATV hulk and takes off after her mother.

Nothing but throaty fey laughter chiming on the chilling wind remains to lead him. Though his brain is telling him to move on, forget the enchanting girl and bizarre story he has stumbled over, because following is only asking for trouble, he climbs on the hulk without hesitation. That strangely inciting sound, so melodic and joyful, loosens the ever tightening snarl of turmoil lodged in his chest since he was broken free from his captors, making him feel sized wrong for his own body, shoved out of sorts, always out of place. Given the risk, whatever indubitable hell he is about to walk in on, he isn't yet ready to give up such an unexpected respite.

So he follows. Into the woods. Into the nightfall.

* * *

"It's a tree," he says, as if it isn't obvious, towering tall and ominous above them all, "There is no hill. It's just a tree."

The girl comes to stand beside him at level, sides brushing lightly, and offers a smile of endless patience, of shared secrets, leaning into his ear, a hand on his stiff shoulder, whispering softly, "Not just any. A weeping willow."

"Still a tree."

"Indeed." As her eyes sparkle with laughter again, she sends his deadpan expression a cheeky counter of flaring eyelids and rising eyebrows. Her husky voice is very serious. "Not far from here lives an ancient oak. Another one of ours."

"What does that _mean_?"

"Watch." The command is airy and excited, blue gaze gleaming with anticipation, eager to see his reaction, and her lips pull up, a pretty mouth making pretty shapes. Because his attention has been caught up again in her, she presses a fingertip to his chin to turn his face forward.

The redhead appears even more the woodland sprite to the boy as she presses palms against the ragged bark of the massive willow like she is feeling a great beast breathe. For a moment, all she does is stand and stare, almost as if waiting for it to respond. Then it must give her the answer she is looking for because she starts moving along it, rounding the immense base of the thing in slow steps, her long snakelike fingers never losing contact with the bark. She makes one trip, a soft hum on her tongue, and the next only goes halfway. Or at least that is all his eyes can track of her progress. A second ring is all he sees since she never comes back around again.

When he ventures warily ahead, confusion and disbelief furrowing up his stoic mask, he finds nothing on the other side. No sign of the unlikeable woman remains. Not a one. And looking back at Zoë is no help. She just grins.

After giving him a moment to absorb this new disorienting development in silence, she sidles up beside him at the base of the tree, enjoying the way he is puzzling fiercely. "Ready?" she asks on a soft breath, stirring him from his stupor. His full lips part then but no sound comes out, so her minx grin softens into a coaxing smile and she offers out her arm, saying significantly, "Take my hand."

Ever the pragmatic one nowadays, his solemn eyes go past her towards the caravan. "The supplies."

"Leave them. The vehicle has to stay here. I'll send the others back for loads."

The girl is still holding out her hand to him, fingers loosely unfurled, wiggling a bit in faint anxiousness, palm held expectantly up. So he lets out a breath and reaches for her. The electric zing of skin on skin jolts his rigid body as his fingers slip in between hers, making him realize he is braced for impact, and forces himself to relax as she leads him in a wide circle around the willow.

On the tip of a sharp intake of air, an uneven ground seems to shift beneath his feet, sliding like the sudden start of a conveyor belt to break his balance before leveling out just a moment later. His vision loses focus, panning out and blurring up, dizzying him. He blinks to clear it and, within the space of that mere fractioned beat, his landscape has drastically altered itself.

The boy finds himself inexplicably immersed in a dank darkness. Amidst some kind of subterranean labyrinth if his night vision is to be believed.

In his shock, his hand slips free of the girl's grasp and he staggers sideways for space. When she slides a tentative touch up his arm, he stiffens despite his raw rational mind. Feeling this, she pulls back, keeps her hands to herself for the next while. But there is nothing but amusement etched across her fine features. He can see that clearly enough in the dim illumination drifting in elusive beams from somewhere off to the western arc of pitch black tunnels.

And there are a _lot_ of tunnels. Most are winding narrow traps for claustrophobia. There are a few, however, which are wide and high. The outlets surround them from every angle as they stand in some sort of antechamber cortex with a vaulted rock ceiling. Mines? No. That's not right. These caverns are natural, not man-made, all jagged stone carved by time itself.

Gathering his wits, Ben swallows hard and gives a low rasp. "What is this place?"

The girl just shrugs. "Home. For now."

From a ways down in one of the main passages, a bright orange glow flares to life, lighting up the dark in a flickering battle of fire and shadow. Another whistle echoes. Their signature beckoning call, he is beginning to understand. He assumes this is where her mother has disappeared to.

Apparently she agrees, because she mutters under her breath an irritable, "Coming."

"What is this place?" he asks again, sterner now. As she tries to follow the flickering, he catches her elbow and forces her to still, standing so close in the intimate darkness. The chill of this empty place tries to seep into his bones. The unnatural heat of his body fights it off fairly for the moment.

Sparing him an infuriatingly placid smile, she releases a sigh and her shoulders rise. "We are a mystic people, Mason." And that is all she says before escaping his slack grip. Rooted to the sandy stone of earth under him, he watches her go until shadow shrouds her deceptively delicate form.

Once she is gone and he is alone in the dark, he grumbles, "Cryptic. I hate cryptic."

"You're one to talk," her husky honeysuckle voice chimes from nowhere, everywhere, bouncing off the walls of rock in a brief cacophony of teasing lilts.

Startled, but more than a little thrilled, Ben pitches towards that glimmer of firelight, following the tangy scent trail of night-blooming jasmine and cherry blossoms until he is back at her side, keeping pace. It is not that deep inward when the passageway opens up into a sprawling central cavern, peaking stories overhead in a dome of dangling spikes, sharpened from rough tectonic movements and water erosion. The habitable stretch of it spreads the impressive distance of a gridiron almost only to pivot at the core in a grotto of vivid azure waterfall and a deep basin dipping down below the ground layers of stone. The sound of flowing water echoes through hollows of the terrain at deafening volumes. Firelight from endless torches bracketed to stone reflect off the shiny surface.

Noticing his stare, Zoë leans sideways to nudge his shoulder in a friendly gesture. "The undercroft fills when the tide comes in. It is quite an event."

"That what you call this place?" Even the allure of her voice fails to distract him from such a sight. "The undercroft?"

"Mm," she hums an affirmative, bright gaze going out to try to share in his wonder, "I'm not sure why. Never asked." Then, gesturing towards the shrouded mouth of one of the outlets on the far east wall, she tells him, "The catacombs are down that direction. Where the personal quarters are kept." Indicating to the west, "The gardens are in there. That burrow inclines to the surface with lots of skylights so it is ideal for growing."

"What surface?" he wants to know, his tone wry but face bland, referring to the fact that there are no major sources of sea anywhere near where they had just been.

"Who's to say?" she counters, going cutely enigmatic on purpose, "Things change."

He makes some murmur of acknowledgement but his brain is entirely preoccupied. A small stream of silhouettes emerge from a southern outlet, grouped tightly together, and his focus sharpens to alert as they near. An inner beast, born from being harnessed, informs the boy of their potential threat by reading subtle body language.

Aware of the shift in tension, she persists with feigned obliviousness, quipping easily, "In the morning, I'll bring you back here and we can ride the rising tide. It's dangerous, but well worth the risk, I promise."

Despite the distraction, something warm and exciting pulls tight and low inside him at her words and the faint frisson full of connotations lacing each one spoken.

Raising her voice from the personal tone she used with him, she addresses all figures approaching now collectively. "Got a good loot to lug in, fellas. Might wanna get going. Never know what other thieves are lurking about."

The trio of shorter statures than their leader scatter aside to amble the way she came with mild mutterings on pack mules. The prominent shadow that had stood point before steps into a shard of firelight when he advances on the gypsy girl.

"Reece," she greets, a slight perfunctory dip of her head, but her lashes lower to hide her crystalline eyes and her voice is cooler than Ben has ever heard it. At the sound of it, his primitive predatory parts take notice, knuckles tautening where he has them pinned at the loops of his belt, ready to move but not making any stupid motions.

The man is likely in his late twenties or early thirties, steel grey eyes and a stern face, more on the side of brawn than lean, lush dark curls like hers except cropped close off, and somewhat too rugged to be beautiful but a bit more than simply handsome. There is a certain sordidness to the palpable friction between the two that makes her go rigid at his proximity and sensing it sets the boy at her side on edge.

"Who's the kid?" he wants to know, nodding negligently with his chin towards Ben. The combative undercurrent to his question is unmistakable.

But being Zoë, she grins right through it, playing up a sheepish slant as she shrugs. "Mayhap I got a tad overprotective of our gentle Gemma here and this one was driven to step in on his brother's behalf."

Ben blinks at her easy overview of the previous night. It's just like her, he's realizing. His mouth wants to curve but he locks the urge down and upholds his mask of vacancy. Instincts are bristled by the man's presence.

"Then invited him home," her quasi friend drawls, making clear what he thinks of it. "Picking up bad habits from your sisters?"

"Well, I thought it only proper." Her eyes glinting with mischief, she angles sideways, pointedly putting her focus on the boy when she teases, "Since I kicked his ass and all. And for what turned out to be no good reason too."

This gets a hoarse chuckle from the observer. "Why am I not surprised?" he wonders, a hot familiarity to his tone that makes the girl tense again in so very subtle displeasure. "Even a razorback freak has his hands full with our sphinx."

Mixing both insult for the interloper and praise for the gypsy girl into one statement. _Skilled_, Ben thinks with acidic bitterness, and has to force his mask to stay in place when a reactionary snarl tries to form. He isn't given to bouts of outbursts for wounded pride. Still, under the disdainful stranger's superior sneer, the scarred line of his spine itches with dark discomfort. Makes the boy want to squirm in shame or attack in aggression. Because he can't, won't allow himself to, he gets a considerable measure of satisfaction when the gypsy girl snarls for him, a barest baring of white teeth, fiery eyes narrowed. Tilting her head, she steps forward, brushing bodily against the man as she passes by, pausing for a second only to lean in, her nose equal to his jaw with her chin tipped up, and makes a sharp snapping gesture at his jugular, teeth clacking in warning just shy of his pulse point before she moves on.

"Come along now, soldier. Uncle Jonnie will want an audience."

Ben is frozen in surprise, bewilderment, maybe a bit astounded and weirdly pleased by the odd yet intensely provocative behavior, but Reece is none of the above. He doesn't look over his shoulder to watch her sashay away, having effectively chastised, dismissed, and his facial muscles are clenched against a suppressed grimace. Somewhere between anger at being shown up and inappropriately cowed, considering the brief browbeating came from such a tiny package.

By the time the boy has reclaimed his place beside her, entering a northwest tunnel lit by torches, he has recovered his stony composure, sorted his bizarre reactions to her, and buried them beneath his cold control. Dry with sarcasm, he stuffs his hands into his back packets as he barbs, "Are all of your people so welcoming?"

She smirks, glancing sidelong as they stride. "Gem and Reece are the rudest of us all. It's good you've dealt with them first."

Next up is this uncle he keeps hearing about. She leads him into a second major vault that rivals the grand scale of the undercroft, lacking the grotto of water, but this one is much less sparse, decorated heavily with autumn themes, drapes and rugs and furniture riddling the chilling cavern. The centre is taken up with a bonfire of a furnace setup with a border of smooth river rocks and a tall stack of cindering hardwood, so that every draft carries the sweet smoky smell of hickory, and something else, something indecipherable. Several rows of long bench tables create a diamond shape nearby and hold a dozen or so of the girl's peers, all as animated and glowing as the bright warm colors around them, enough so that he feels a shock at absorbing the atmosphere.

As if stepping into a whole other world.

When was the last time he felt such unburdened harmony? No dark drab depression is suffocating the spirits of every person in the room. No dirty unwashed masses wearing faces marred with battle weary expressions. No tragic maudlin souls or starving bodies. Who _are_ these people?

"The court." She interrupts his disturbed thoughts, her chin practically propped on his shoulder as her mouth leans into his ear to whisper privately, and the fierce furrow of his brow eases at the smooth sound of honeysuckle. "This is court."

"Good to know."

And she pulls back to grin up at his serious tone. "No clue what that means, huh?"

"Nope."

"Thought so."

After a moment of sharing small smiles, laughter in their eyes, he feels lulled enough into the illogical comfort of her presence to speak freely. "So ..."

Sensing curious gazes on them, Zoë subtly slides a hand down his arm, hooking hers around his elbow in a quietly proprietary manner. "Yes?"

He pretends to ignore the undercurrent around him. "Is this some cult practice then? You've got an Uncle leader. Go around calling each other Brother This and Sister That?" Since she doesn't bristle, he can't resist adding a dry, "Am I gonna be indoctrinated?"

To which she laughs outright, a sudden burst of sound from her chest before she goes to cover her mouth, eyes still sparkling with it. "Interesting idea," she says once sobered. "But _no_. The only people I call sister are my own. It's a genetics thing ... unfortunately. Cannot escape them. Trust me, I've tried." Using a light grip on his arm, she tugs him off into fringes of the gathering as the bystanders get bored and return to their own affairs. "We do call _him_ Uncle Jonnie even though only Gemma is his blood kin niece. And I his grand niece. But that is more because it is what he's known as rather than any real title." Then she draws him slowly towards the centre of court, where a dais like structure rests, holding up a smaller VIP type group of people.

Even from across the room, as an outsider, it is obvious of the inner hierarchy here. The top dogs residing distinctive from their plebian masses. It makes him fairly uneasy. "He _is_ your leader."

The girl shrugs, being cryptic again. "You could say so."

Ben stills, bringing her up short by her grasp on his sleeve, and ducks his chin low when she spins to face him, leveling a cold gaze. "That isn't a subjective question."

"It's complicated," she huffs, rolling sapphire eyes in impatience, but reels herself in as he refuses to budge at her dismissal. Pulling close, so close in fact their bodies brush, she wets her lips and lowers her voice, stuck somewhere between teasing and serious. "Don't be nervous. He isn't going to be all _off with his head_ if he doesn't approve of you. But do be polite. My uncle doesn't suffer fools well. Especially disrespectful ones."

"I wasn't nervous a second ago," he counters after a stiff second of consideration. Though his features stay perfectly deadpan, completely unreadable, a slight lilted edge to his cadence betrays his joke.

Pleased, she gives him a flared look, skipping backwards to separate with a hot laugh that throws her head back, sending dark curls dancing. Just like that, all the tension that built off the new alien environment she thrust him into dissipates. He should be wary, but as he watches her go, back to her playful pretty self, he isn't capable of worrying. Which should frighten him more than anything else he has experienced these last hours. But it doesn't scare him. It gives him ... hope.

* * *

The introductions are almost smooth. Shockingly so. Zoë is skillfully manipulative, everyone in the room a pawn for her to some extent, and Uncle Jonnie appears to have only a mild interest at all, having taken her mother's immediate complaints with a grain of salt to begin with. But he also _appears_ to be a young man, younger even than Gemma, and the superior air of authority around him belies such an appearance, so Ben knows to not trust what things around here _look_ like.

Never straying from his lazy sprawl over a throne of a chair at the core of stone dais, Uncle Jonnie regards his grand niece and her charge with cool speculation, softened just by the glint of general amusement in his eyes, sapphire like the gypsy girl. While asking the boy various questions about his history, his state of being, in sharp pointed inquiries masquerading as casual curiosities, he strokes idle fingers through fiery silken ringlets of the little girl sitting in his lap, somehow making such an innocuous gesture menacing. He isn't threatening in mien, but the potential for it is there, hidden beneath the layers of his lackadaisical prince persona.

Ben is clipped but cooperative with the gypsy girl's eyes on him, allowing him to feel unwound enough to breathe, to not go into that dangerous defensive mode.

Until her simpering sisters swarm that is, seizing the bothered baby of their brood after a thorough and inappropriate examination of her find, dragging her away to leave him to fend for himself, which is the perilous moment things could have gone downhill. _Way_ downhill.

Thankfully, amidst the stunned wake of their flustering and flurried interruption, silence deafening and awkward for the outsider, her uncle slides the child off his lap and offers the boy a welcoming smirk as he rises and crosses off the elevated rock to clap him on the back, hugging his shoulders in an easy embrace that makes his instincts scream. Ignoring the way he goes roughly rigid at the touch, Jonnie announces, "Come, Mason. If my Zoëphine says you are our friend then that is what you shall be." To his followers, "Somebody get this kid a drink!"

Though it is difficult at times, Zoë has never been wholly incapable of evading sisters, as pervasive as they can be. _Like cockroaches_, she swears. But she designs to let herself be swept off and fluttered over before the nightly feast because she knows the only way her soldier boy has a chance of surviving the court is to stand on his own. She can only do so much for forcing acceptance on both sides. They must come to meet in the middle without her for it to be even a little lasting.

And she is surprised to realize that she _wants_ it to be lasting. She wants him to stay. Like the others. Only more so. If the other strays had decided to move on, she would not have minded more than superficially. She hadn't set hopes on their continued presence. They are friends. Nice to have around, sure, but nothing that would upset her if one day they were gone. But this one ...

She needs to _know_ this one.

"You _want_ this one," her eldest sister says, reading her expression like a master with a sly smile curving thin coral lips as she pushes her shoulders down to get her seated on a stool inside the overarched tent at a shadowed southeastern fringe of centre court.

While the others tug rudely at her hair and body, stripping off her raiding garments, brushing through her tangled curls until they gleam, cleaning out blood and grime from under her newly manicured nails, making her snarl and slap every other minute or so, she sends her eldest sibling a glare. "I feel disposed towards him. That's all."

Julia Lynn raises a copper brow, her coloring much like their mother but her mood only slightly so, and simply challenges, "Oh?"

The gypsy girl is all dignity when she lifts her chin and insists, "Yes."

Her ever studious counterpart Teresa Lee leans forward on her haunches, pulling off her boots to replace them with more comfortable ballet slippers, lacing satin cords along her calf as she does. "Our sphinx has been disposed towards strays before. Never males. Never seriously."

Trying to keep from getting defensive, Zoë fidgets. "This one is different."

"He sure is. Look at you." This from the petite _Esmeralda_ type brunette of Belle Lyx. "Where has our Zoëphine gotten to? Who is this Delphic imposter?"

"Not like _that_. I just meant he is interesting is all," she argues, swatting hands away, shrugging off the sister who tries to steal her functional sports bra to wrap her in lace. "You know he nearly overpowered me? In a _fight_. And I wasn't playing much, mind you, but he nearly bested my top efforts."

Another round of smug sly smiles greets her scowl. The eldest clasps her shoulders, shoving her back down again when she tries to escape, crowing with soft musical humor, "Just as I suspected. _Ah_, our badass baby girl has found herself a crush."

The scowl goes from halfhearted to fierce. "Take that back!"

Tittering in victory at having gotten a good rise out of her, all her sisters scatter back, avoiding range of her violent outburst until the first few flares have somewhat subsided. When they reconvene, hovering once more over the little one to resume fluttering about, there is a decidedly satisfied air to their collective countenance that chafes her goodwill. But she bites her tongue until it bleeds and forces her face to smooth.

"He is lost. _I_ found him. That makes it _my_ responsibility that he finds himself again before he leaves us. Understand?"

"Sure. Sure." Julia waves her seriousness off. "We read you."

A vindictive elfin grin darkens Belle's wholesome heart-shaped face. "We also aren't blind enough to believe this is charity work."

"Nobody said anything about charity," she concedes, albeit reluctantly and irritably, "I'm just warning you all to tread with care. None of your usual games, do you hear me? Try even _one_ and I _will_—"

"Ooh." The interjection comes from Belle. "Look at Zoë girl. All in a kerfuffle."

"Yeah," a snickering golden-haired Cara Laune pipes up, "I think I see a blush."

Used to their patronizing after sixteen years of the same, she just sinks back in defeat with a roll of her eyes and a heavy sigh, muttering lightly, "Oh, _do_ shut up."

Bright grey eyes wide in mocking, Julia Lynn sings, "Yes, mistress."

If it were the soldier boy and his dearly damaged intensity insinuating such things, she would turn it around and have a grand time getting him flushed and flustered at all of the notions a _crush_ on him might entail. But her sisters are entirely different matters. She has made it a perpetual objective in life to not provide them with ammunition which might make her sorely regret keeping them safe from grievous harm a time or two.

Besides, they never fail to get under her skin, no matter _what_ the circumstance.

And the last thing she wants is them messing with Mason.

Not that she is as of yet willing to analyze _why_ such an idea bothers her so.

From behind her, graceful hands busy corralling her ebony locks into a loose crown of upswept underpinnings, annoyingly perfect alabaster skin and stiff strawberry hair frames the Kewpie doll face of her middle sister, airheaded Arryn Lux. In a gentle tone, she breaks the hush to tell her, "That does make the revelry tonight special."

"Nonsense."

"Zoëphine," her eldest chides, copper brow risen again, hands on so voluptuous hips. If their Belle is the petite Esmeralda, Julia is the amply curvaceous version. Zoë is stuck somewhere in between the two right now, but she isn't quite finished developing, so who knows what she'll be when she's done. "Oh, little sister. Be honest with us."

Teresa kneels down again and folds her hands on her lap. "We saw you out there."

Cara and Belle wear matching Cheshire cat grins. "We _know_."

The gypsy girl turns up her nose, sniffs primly in response, and states in a clear tone, "Honestly? You all need to quit being dramatic hens."

Laying her hands back on the girl's shoulders, Julia bends to bring their gazes even. "Tell us the truth." Then, after a pointed pause for theatrics, "He gives you butterflies." Another arch of that perfect brow. "Does he not?"

Zoë sucks in a sharp breath. Her spine stiffens, bowing as she stretches to full height, about to tell them off, condescend to them for being silly simpering _females_ with nearly _nothing_ to do with their lives. _Come on. Butterflies? _As if _that_ is important at the end of the long hard day. Not like having pretty things to look at or _real_ thrills like adrenaline jolting through your system. How can faint fluttery _butterfly_ wings in a girl's stomach possibly compare to the breathtaking rush of a hunt or a fight that makes her muscles ache with delicious strain?

It can't. It just can't.

So what if every time she is near the boy her head gets kinda fuzzy and her heart gets all overexcited like she has been running hard and fast enough to kick-start endorphins? That shouldn't happen when she is just standing _still_. It's weird. It's too ... unsettling. And yet she keeps taking every chance to stand close and _feel_ it. Like shocking herself over and over again with a low-grade live wire. It makes her hand go all numb and stuff, but she keeps coming back for more, even though it isn't really a pleasant experience, not in the traditional sense.

With that realization, her mouth clamps closed, breath whooshing from her nose as she falls back onto the stool, surrendering to the mercy of their fluttering fixing hands, resigned to her fate for now.

So they dress her up. Preen around her at their work. And she hates it. But she never explains to them _why_ she avoids such bonding moments these days. It isn't because she is a devout tomboy. She isn't. It isn't because their fluffy attitudes aggravates her always. She can be fluffy too. So she should explain eventually. But she won't. It isn't necessary. Not really. They must know. Even if they can't actually _understand_, they all know that even after all this time, it still feels incongruous.

There are six sisters here in total including Zoë.

There should be seven.

* * *

**TBC**


	4. Nightfall

**Nightfall**

* * *

Revelry of the twilight hours happens about every evening. From all he has learned in the last few hours—which is very little, all things considered—the word _revelry_ means something more to these people than Webster would define. Something that has to do with food and refreshment and entertainment and all-around jovial socializing. Lights of the core bonfire flicker soft shadows and orange glows across the gathering that lends to their friendly almost intimately carefree atmosphere.

Is it any wonder a boy like Ben would be on edge here amongst these odd unknowns? Dangerous. It is a dangerous place to be, surrounded by strangers, steeped in confusion. Even if he is armed, he is still left to feel startlingly helpless. Set adrift without a lifeline. He had a raft before, keeping him afloat, but she is gone now.

The peculiar leader sat him down at a long bench and table near the dais as soon as Zoë disappeared from his sight like a cruel deserter. Immediately, he was blocked off by a trio of uncomfortably personable boys not much older than himself, dropping down on either side of him at the bench, closing him in at the mercy of their contented chatter. That is where he was to stay through commencement of the night's feast. And feast it is. At least to his standards. None of _them_ seem too awed by the spreads.

There are acres of greens, all kinds, steamed and baked and stewed and crispy fresh, bowls and platters of various sidings like soups and casseroles and coleslaw and a weird dry mixing of mushrooms and less unsettling stuff like potatoes, mashed or fried slices, and even different kinds of fresh bread for dinner rolls. He sees several types of meats, smoked and braised, but the main meal is venison, shaped into steaks, grilled up bloody, and he knows where it comes from.

When one is accustomed to cold canned products from abandoned grocery stores, stale or freeze-dried goods, and tasteless slop stirred together for starving masses made from scavenged rot, a thing like _this_ is practically ambrosial. Transcendent even.

All around him, people shovel absently at the wondrous foods, most more concerned with their conversations full of rich laughter and raised voices. As a cool calculated gaze from the alien part of him—the beast—morphs into a marveling stare from the jaded boy that remains, he scans his surroundings slowly, carefully, absorbing every detail of it all, memorizing every face he can, finding the forgotten Old Ben with all his sci-fi nerd ways thinks the scene reminiscent of some glorious medieval banquet and wants to geek out. If he had come across his gypsy girl a year or so ago, he would have. These days, it takes much more to break through the neutral shell of his exterior and unearth the naïveté of his past self. Still, such a fact doesn't stop him from discreetly reveling in the wonders of this new universe.

Halfway through his overstuffed plate, a young couple falls into a vacant spot directly across the table from him, a tiny brunette sprawling haphazardly on her other half's lap whilst in the middle of hysterics, clay goblets full of liquid sloshing about. The guy grabs her around the waist to keep her from spilling onto the floor as her laughter fades low to a few amused hiccups, wiping at her watery eyes when she finishes, and her free hand is winding around his shoulder to tangle in dirty ditchwater hair at the nape of his neck. Before they even take notice of him, Ben is stiffening at their presence, a sudden jolt of familiar electricity skittering up his spine, bringing his senses to high alert.

A reactive sort of energy bounces off the pair. Signals are arcing over the slight space from each end and meeting in the middle only to zap at the counter source.

He has just felt this particular voltaic sensation once before since being unharnessed. When he came in close contact with Karen. Another unharnessed. Remembering how _that_ encounter turned out, he is understandably not thrilled to recognize the link now. To feel that charged conduit form between the three as their energies meet in the air is more than slightly disturbing. Like protons and neutrons from separate nuclear forces torn between bonding or repelling.

Though he can't see it, he knows the spikes in his nape are lighting up, glowing blue as they do whenever his alien anatomy triggers.

Unlike the last time this occurred, there is no gravitational pull beyond the emotional instinct to gravitate towards kin that is the very basis of human nature. These two aren't abusing the link, reaching out and throttling him with it, using it to manipulate him like the last unharnessed one he met. That arc he feels is just a residual reflex.

"You must be the new stray," she says, flipping strings of greasy chestnut hair from her brow to clear her muddy brown eyes before she offers him a breezy smile.

Every time he hears that word pinned to him, it gets more irritating than the last. Sensing his less than fuzzy frame of mind, her chair of a guy tightens his hands on her where they bracket her small torso and shoots him a sharp warning look from behind her shoulder. _Be nice_, he seems to demand, _or I'll kick your ass_. And it almost raises up his hackles in challenge. But the breezy smile from the brunette is still there, waiting for him to decide how to react, her eyes wide and guileless, so he forces himself to loosen. Once he isn't as rigid, he can smooth his features into something like a pleasant mask, maybe even stretch his mouth into something resembling a civil smile in return.

"That's me." His voice is low. Flat like his expression. "The stray."

The guy seems satisfied he isn't going to be rude and offend her. The girl just laughs. "Yeah. I know. We _still_ can't shake the label and it's been— What? Four? Five months?" She glances back and down at her chair's face so he nods for backup. Despite her strike at establishing camaraderie, Ben remains focused on his plate. But as succulent as it is, it isn't enough to excuse excluding the couple so pointedly when she refuses to give up. "I'm Thais, by the way, and this brute here is Jeremy."

"Good to know."

"Not much of a talker?"

"Nope."

"Yeah. Neither is Jer. If I didn't have the girls to spend time with, I'd lose my mind."

"Girls?"

"You know." Still fingering absently through her companion's hair, she twists around in his lap, ignoring his chiding frown, and nods her head in the direction of the bonfire. Following her gaze, Ben has his breath catching in his throat at the sight that greets him. As the meal wound down, most stuck to their seats, letting empty plates be taken away as they refill their drinks and carry on. But a dozen or so not busy with clearing tables are on their feet and circling the flickering flames, flowing into a dancing sort of activity, music lacing the rise and fall of noise. He'd searched the crowd earlier to find her over at an intimate group of family on a natural formation of steps below the central dais while they all ate. She'd caught his eye and winked, sending an impish little grin, and the heat that marked his cheeks made him turn away. Now she drifted towards writhing flames, joining in for a spell, nearly but not quite lost amidst the thriving throng of her sisters. And the picture of her makes his face warm again.

Not wanting to be caught giving out longing looks, he forces his stare to slide off.

It isn't as easy to erase the image of her from the forefront of his mind. Nor is it to banish all of the subtle physiological responses that image evokes in the boy. The rate of his heart, for instance, or the dampening of his palms and the uneven flutter of his pulse as his blood heats up in his veins, flooding southward despite his best efforts to negate such an affect with the cautious control of the beast. He has gained many attributes from his harnessed time, granted, but the art of biofeedback is not a simple thing to master. His resistance to her presence—her _existence_—is already fraught enough to disconcert. And now she has to go and look like _that_.

Those glossy midnight curls pulled up to clear her soft round face and slender neck. Tendrils hang as frames at either temple, tips catching sporadically at balm on her lips, which pout and curve with her enjoyment, as coral as her big eyes are brilliant blue in the flattering firelight. The cover-ups of jacket and leggings have been discarded in favor of a more revealing ensemble. The bottom half is fine. A full layered skirt that swings on beyond her movements, an excessive bell shape like ones her mother favors, pitch black. But the upper regions are another matter. Bands of the skirt drape low on a slight swell of her hips, exposing a fair stretch of stomach, golden and taut with toned muscles from a living of hard martial arts. Almost halfway up her torso, stiff embroidered fabric wraps snug around her chest in a cropped halter, hued black and bronze with red roses sewn in for unneeded accents. With the way the material hugs her natural assets, nobody will be looking at the pattern. At the junction of her underarms, several straps wind over curves of her shoulders, more for sake of appearance than actually holding it in place.

The boy thinks, _a gypsy dress to match her sultry gypsy eyes_.

On a spin, she flips her head his way and he has to swallow. Hard.

There are rare occasions nowadays in which he is reminded that he is still merely 15. And male. But now would be one. It has been long enough that he can't say exactly what a normal _human_ boy his age should be doing. There are none left alive, he sort of thinks. Those that survived the occupation are inherently _ab_normal. Least he hasn't met any yet whether one or the other. So he isn't certain but has suspicions that the way he reacts to the bubbly fierce girl that has made him a taken in stray isn't something he needs to be all that alarmed by. Probably it can't be helped. He'll just have to work harder to retain his senses, sharp and unclouded, whenever she gets too close.

_Zoëphine_. What a strange name. Suits her well, he'd say. Also? He seems to be using that word a lot lately. _Strange_.

"I know Zoë brought you to us. From that look, though, I'd guess you met the rest of the lovely Lorain sisters as well."

"Lorain?" he echoes, jerking his focus away from the bonfire as the genial alto voice of the girl called Thais breaks his daze. "Thought her name was Lealla."

"It is. That's Zoë. Lorain is from Gemma. Each of her daughters has a different end." Anticipating his skepticism, she shrugs narrow shoulders. "It's a culture thing. Don't ask me to explain."

"What are you all?" he asks in lieu, for what feels like the umpteenth time, and earns another glimpse at that breezy smile.

"We're human." Her arm squeezes tellingly around her chair's neck at this statement but his face stays bland. "Used to be at least. But they're ... well, _not_."

That is obviously a topic she is unwilling to expound upon since she moves on quick. Rather than give him room to inquire further, she veers clumsily into a spiel of history on herself and her silent partner. So instead of discovering what he wants to know now, he learns that the unharnessed pair are 17 and 19 respectively, who got nabbed by mechs in New Orleans last year and set to labor on harnesses. Eventually, they were rescued by their original regiment in the militia. Bonded over their shared experience. One of those classic cliché _happy ever after_ in the makings, right? Except that once the harnesses had been removed and Thais, who was part of the hive for a significantly longer time than her counterpart, continued her slow startling metamorphosis into a skitter, they were effectively exiled. At least _she_ was. And wherever Thais goes, Jeremy is sure to follow. They thought of themselves as pretty much doomed out all on their own with her change coming on ever steadily. But then they soon came across the court and Gemma worked her miracle magic to cease the process. She is vague on just how the prickly woman had managed to do such a thing but isn't too shy to lift up her shirt unbidden and expose just how far the physical transition had gotten.

For the first time in months, Ben feels himself freeze in harsh remembered terror of every nightmare he has ever been plagued by since the world ended, every deepest fear he suffers as New Ben.

Reading his eyes, since his facial features are stony and indecipherable, Thais spares a small sympathetic smile, seemingly unbothered by the perceived revulsion and shame, even as a protective Jeremy yanks her shirt back down, smoothing the cheap material along her waist with both hands, as if soothing an animal by brushing her pelt.

It doesn't matter. The sight is seared onto the insides of his eyelids for eternity now. Oh, how he wished she hadn't shown him that. He'll never be able to forget the way all of the soft milky skin of her midsection has turned to a leathery rough hide of scaled skin, creeping forward from her sides to meet at the core of her belly and dip downward a bit, stopping just along a line of her pelvic bone. He didn't see how far up it goes but thinks it probably isn't far up her chest since everything appeared to be the relative right shape from over her clothing. Though it _is_ hard to tell with the obscuring thickness of her top. But _that_ is _not_ his business.

To keep himself from getting queasy, from being overtaken by his sudden surge of repressed debilitating panic at thoughts of his future, Ben fervently reminds himself that the other part of her message, the important part, the _vital_ part of it is that the process can be _stopped_.

With that in mind, he can almost breathe again. Almost.

The paled sickened look of him draws an exuberant Zoë from her haze of heated fun, bringing down her glowing mood with worry as she catches a glimpse across the court at his troubled countenance. Because breaking free of the crowd and going over to ask him what is wrong would be conspicuous—and, honestly, a lot more work—she takes the lazy way to respond and slips herself between a pair of writhing bodies until she is in his line of peripheral vision, moving now solely and slyly to attract his attention.

Distraction is what she does best. Aside from kick ass.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take long to garner his undivided focus, maudlin thoughts momentarily forgotten. The sharp shape of her collarbone and slim set of her shoulders are careful contrasts to the supple contours of further down and all put on display with her silken sinuous motions. He can't recall the last time he saw someone who was not even a little malnourished yet she is shaped full and richened with a glow of good health. Indeed, all of them show no sign of suffering in the slightest. It stirs something resentful inside of him to see it, even as it inspires a sense of hope, prospects for his own people. Then again, hopes for the future don't stand a chance in his brain against the onslaught of a teasing shimmying Zoë. His green hooded eyes drag over the subtle seductive sway of her hips before he looks away again, cheeks coloring red to match full lips, and hears her laughter all the way across the court over a cacophony of other voices and melodies. That throaty rasp affects him deeply. _Embarrassingly_.

Realizing he has spent the last days practically being led around by the nose thanks to teenage hormones, no matter what he has been convincing himself, Ben resolves to turn things around. Excusing himself from his companions, he escapes the dining hall and crosses towards the bonfire, finding himself a spot on the edge of a stone bench set alongside several others circling the pit, perches there with his forearms on his knees, his eyes fixed on the gypsy girl amidst her drunken reveling peers. She turns her head, shutters her gaze with lush lashes, and gives a small almost shy smile. He then promptly forgets all about his freshly steeled resolve.

Watching her dance clearly entrances him, but he tries to conceal his reactions to her as he has proven wont to do, which she is more and more enjoying as she familiarizes to his myriad mannerisms. Zoë loves making the pretty boy blush, she is aware, so she slips from the sea to glide by his post for both brooding and admiring his view. She pauses at his feet only long enough to share a piercing look, one of those wordless exchanges that never fail to sweep the breath right out of her under the pressure of his vivid jaded stare, and dip low to brush soft cool lips against the heat of his closed mouth in not quite a kiss but a tantalizing taste. An electric feathery caress of maybe promises.

Before he can react, a wave is washing her away again, enveloping the girl once more amidst the sea of swaying bodies, so very many currents intertwining seamlessly, and all he sees is a lightning smile of feline satisfaction that makes him frown. Consternation. Turning tables might have been an overly optimistic aim.

Later, after skillfully evading Reece and every other trying to engage her attention, she returns to her stray and leads him from court down to the depths of the catacombs. Long winding halls of carved openings like doors giving access to separate apartments of small caverns. The deeper into the dark belly of the catacombs the larger they get in size, converted into common dens, sectioned apart by various lavish tents for each individual, as if for family units. Inside one of the core compartments, she ushers him into a corner nomadic tent of hexagon shape along a row of seven others similar but not exact to hers. Within, a border of plush red throw pillows line uneven stone floor fitted to Persian rug. A raised pallet of featherbed mattress to the left and a low long wicker table surrounded by mounds of the same bordering throw pillows to the right with a center cleared for one intricate iron-wrought candelabrum cradling a bouquet of ivory waxes. His impression is of something Indian and exotic. Like everything else about Zoëphine.

"Make yourself at home," she tells him, heading first to the central fixture, where she cups her hands around each candle and purses her cherry lips, blowing a delicate stream of cool breath at wick by wick. He watches with wide fascinated eyes from behind her as the charred tips alight with strong small flames when she does so. So, a neat magic trick. While he is still staring hard at what she has done, she tosses a grin over her shoulder, adding lightly, "Maintain your guard while wandering the rest of the hill, but you will be perfectly safe when here in my haven, I give my word."

"You get a real kick out of keeping me confused, don't you?"

Annoyingly entertained by his stoic flinty face, she simply shrugs, swiveling on a heel to head next for the wicker table, where a tray is set with pitcher and goblets for drink. "Yes, I suppose I've tormented you for long enough, and you bore it so well." Her lips lilt as she bends to pour the pitcher of wine, her patronizing demeanor only partly sincere. "Think you ought to be rewarded?"

"With some truth."

Shooting up straight, she appears shocked. "I've never lied to you."

Unimpressed, he drawls, "Omission counts."

"Does _not_." Her smart retort makes him smile, despite his very best efforts to stifle it, and she matches the expression as she approaches, goblets in hand. When she offers one for him, he shakes his head, mouth regaining its usual grim line. To which her eyes roll. "No worries." As her sapphire irises flare, she leans in as if to share a secret and purrs, only half tauntingly, "I'll protect you."

"Well, if _you'll_ be keeping me safe," he gamely replies, his deep voice a level deadpan to mirror his mask, yet takes the proffered wine from her nonetheless, hiding his flinch at the electric zing of their fingers brushing. Tries to thrust the memory of her quick kiss ruthlessly away, so recent as it is, so disorienting.

The knowing smile she reveals as she slides by him makes his breath hitch, his pulse go wild, but he controls himself with the same ruthlessness before rotating to follow her. She hides it by taking a slow sip of her own wine, stretches a demonstrative arm out to encourage him into the nest of pillows as she lowers herself to sprawl gracefully across the elevated pallet. "Come," she says in that husky honeysuckle tone of amused allure, "Get comfortable and I shall answer all your curiosities with total honesty."

"Where are we?" Simplest of all the questions he has collected.

Hiding her fey smile behind her wine, she answers, "A _sídhe_ hill."

"Not _literally_?" he tries to state, but his words lilt at the end as her eyes sparkle and his innate sense of disbelief pales horribly compared to his no-nonsense realistic self. Though she pronounces the term with an exotic cant that makes it obscure, he is able to still recognize the myriad connotations of mythology. Trying to keep himself composed, patience fraying now that he is finally about to get an explanation, he lowers to sit beside her spread of a bed with his knees bent towards his chest and his arms wrapped loosely around his legs, jacket gone, leaving him in just his dirty tee and dark baggy cargo pants. "This doesn't look much like a hill. What it looks like is a system of caves."

"We are not the _daoine sìth_, if you know anything of your Gaelic mythos," she says, ignoring his dry drawling mockery.

"My father is a historian. I've heard stories." Glancing warily down into the chalice, he takes an experimental sip before prompting, "The _daoine sìth ..._"

"Meaning _people of the mounds_."

"Spirits of nature, right?"

"Yes. The ancestors." Balancing the stem of her wine on her hip so absentmindedly, she props herself up on an elbow with her fingers curving at her throat under the layers of tousled silk spilling like a dark halo around where she lazes about with a hooded gaze. "Gaels knew them as their gods and goddesses. But that is just primitive talk. They lived scattered underground in the so-called fairy mounds. In an invisible world that coexists alongside of our own."

It's a familiar concept to the sci-fi geek in him. "A parallel universe."

"That's how they thought of it."

"What's the truth of it then?"

Zoë grins like he won a prize. "The hills are mere pockets. A network of extra spaces, if you will, not actually an entire universe. There are certain places where the fabric of your reality folds over on itself, creating crevices for the fae that prefer this realm here to dwell within over their own, living amongst you instead of their original kin."

"And this place is one of those hills?"

"Yes." Though she has been watching her fingers toy with the carvings of her goblet as she spoke, she keeps a close eye on the boy in her periphery and, noticing how deep in his thoughts he is getting with her revelations, seeks to draw his focus back onto her by stroking her tongue across the seam of her pouted lips, wanting to draw his stare there. But he is too seeped in the implications of the casual conversation, absorbing the facts of her nonchalant presentation by adopting a theoretical manner for it, to be distracted by his hormones. So she gives up with a put-upon huff and resumes her scholarly lecture. "There are many havens on this continent if you know where to look and have the touch to access them. Even more in the old Celtic lands of Europe."

"Except you said you aren't fairies."

"Fae," she corrects, laughter gleaming in her crystalline eyes, "I did say something to that effect, didn't I?" To her flirty bait, he just raises his brow, so she heaves a sigh again. "What I said was we are not _daoine sìth_, which doesn't mean we aren't of fae nature."

"So you _are_ freaking fairies?" His irritation at her trifling manner is plain to hear so. "I find that hard to believe."

"Fae," she chides again, uncoiling a lithe leg and using her toes to shove his shoulder, knocking him sideways for a second with an exasperated roll of bright kohl-lined eyes. "And I don't see why you would. Perhaps a few years ago, your mind would have been too narrow in thought to accent the existence of any other sentient species but your own. But now?"

Yes, it is only the old mentalities of _Before_ making him incredulous. "You're right."

"Of course I am."

"So what are you then? And if you aren't people of the mounds, why are you here?"

At this line of inquiry, her playfulness sobers in a fleeting flash of unmasked despair before her usual airs of grim joviality return. "When the first wave of invasion struck, Faerie called all its people home and closed down the gateways, isolating themselves in their own realm for the first time in millennia."

Ben deadpans, "Brave of them."

"Indeed." The morbid humor of her retort aids a camaraderie his comment invokes. "Unfortunately for us, only purebloods were invited."

"You mean ..."

Zoë gives a mirthless little smile as she picks up where the rapt blond boy leaves off. "I mean that, as a race, fae are often fond of mating with humans. Especially those with the inclination to spend time in this world to begin with." Then, her voice softer, quieter, she tells him like she is confessing, "No fae with mixed blood was called before the gates were sealed. If we have traces of humanity in us, we belong here with the damned."

"So the only ones left are half-breeds?" he wonders, simultaneously trying to stifle the irrational ire at her _damned_ categorization and the highly unwise urge to comfort the girl. Such a sentiment would not be well-received, he believes, since doing so would effectively be acknowledging that he sees the hidden vulnerabilities beyond her façade. So he clears his throat and firms his features. "Of your people, I mean?"

"Not so." Her sudden smile has her spirits rebounding, somehow seeming to be both genuine and affected at once, and the uncomfortable heat itching at his skin recedes. Reclaiming that easy purr, she says, "Several true ones chose to remain on this side. Those with impure attachments. Like my mother and Uncle Jonnie. But most of us here are the dirty children." Her lips are still curved but now the shape they make for him is one of wicked teasing and bitter amusement. Plus a smidge of warped self-deprecation. "Illegitimates."

Needing to get past the embedded thorn of _that_ issue, he follows a logical conclusion and questions, "Your dad is human?"

"My father was ... something else."

_Great_, he thinks, realizing this direction of topic is even pricklier than the previous. Surmises flatly, "He's gone."

"Yes." She shifts focus to her wine, fingers playing again at the shell, as she tells him, "I do not know where or what for but I haven't seen him since I was a child." And before he can ask, although he hadn't intended to, she expounds, "Gem had a great love once. He wasn't it." Her shoulders shrug slightly. "Her mate was human. He died years before I was born. _After_ siring my sisters." Another pause. This one unsettles him the most but he doesn't know why. "There are seven of us and we share only our mother in common." Then she is done speaking of herself so she burrows in deeper to the plush cushions and summons back that shiny endearing effervescence of hers that never seems to leave her for very long at a time. "Now. Tell me about Ben Mason."

He never gets to ask her what that cryptic _something else_ means.

The pair lays drinking and talking long into the night. She eventually answers every question he voices but gets bored often so continuously leads his thoughts away to more interesting things for herself. His normal laconic countenance has been coaxed away to accommodate her desires to get to know her new _stray_. And done so in a manner which he doesn't even realize the changes until afterwards, after the fae girl has learned more about his past and his family and his inner workings than anyone on the earth, and he is not even worried about what subtle dangerous information he may have divulged during his jeopardous lapse. Very unlike himself. But she has that effect on people.

As illumed as he is by faint candlelight reflecting off reds and golds, he is quite more beautiful a boy than before. Liquor has him flushed and heavy-lidded the way she likes. Sounds of the revelry lasting on into the night are distant comforting hums of melodies that lull her and in extension _him_ into a lovely drugged state. Those pretty boy features are still so tender, still so raw with youth that she finds it kind of heartbreaking to watch the grim stone abyss lurking in their depths, fighting for prevalence even as she musters attempt after attempt to quell his guard down. Heartbreak to savor. _Fascinating_ too. She is always on the lookout for something inspiring emotion. _Any_ would do. The light are nice. But _dark_ are delicious.

When he stiffens for the millionth time, resisting relaxation, she is right there ready with a soothing siren call. Tireless in her deceptively careless determination. "The aliens are horribly advanced, of course, but there is no need to be concerned about them here. No one can reach us inside the hills." She pauses, draws a deep drink, then flashes him her best minx grin. "Isn't that funny? How long has it been since the invaders arrived? And I still find it ridiculous using that word. _Aliens_. How silly."

The emphasizing laughter she uses to mark her point, a low rasping chuckle really, only lasts a heartbeat or so but chimes like children laughing in warm golden sunshine, like crystal flowing rivers and summer breezes. Though she smells of roasted spices and some exotic flowering passion fruit, she gives him dreamlike images of dancing beneath pale moonlight with climbing fires, scattering embers like her eyes, sparks flying away to ink skies and shining stars. There is a cozy intimate welcoming atmosphere to the caves but her infectious moods make it feel confining and claustrophobic in comparison with all the freeing intoxicating sensations she evokes. A paradox of thoughts.

"So. That's what your people do? Hide out in your secret hills. Come into our world just often enough to scavenge supplies." He unlocks his arms from around his knees to lower onto his side, propped by an elbow, almost but not quite mimicking her posture. He tries to smother his resentment as he says, "I guess you guys aren't really interested in taking it back. Are you actually satisfied living like banished scavengers? To lurk in all your dark shadows while they burn our planet to the ground around us?"

Though he is hoping to incite her anger, trying to distance them to protect himself, she only spares him a soft smile. "The world falls apart, Mason. That's just what it does. This isn't the first time. Surely won't be the last." Pausing a breath, letting that sink in, she sears him with a serious stare, her vivid blue eyes gleaming in the dim orange glows. "Our numbers have dwindled so, we aren't capable of an impressive assault. So we go on as we always have." Lightening again, her lips compress, spread, as she toasts her goblet into the air. "Living to the fullest."

"Could always join forces with the resistance," he suggests, "Organize the troops and all that. Your kind is capable of so much more than regular humans. You'd help a lot." Though he knows what the resignedly grim amusement of her expression means, he is already imagining a vast array of brighter possibilities. If the straggling fae gypsies and rogue unharnessed were to gather with the surviving militia, chances for the opposition would increase exponentially.

Zoë is watching him closer than usual now, enjoying the fire of fresh intent in him even while she shakes her head to dispel his fanciful notions before they can grow wild, sitting up and leaning forward into his space, palm pressed to crimson satin to prop her, looking down at the boy. "This _has_ occurred to us, soldier. Indeed, there has been much debate over the matter, but the wellbeing of _our_ people is the only priority for my uncle. There are those of us who disagree, who might seek out thriving factions of resistance to be of assistance to their cause," she drawls, laying back down, lashes shuttering again, "if only that didn't mean leaving our clan unprotected."

The way she says these words slow and suggestively makes it clear more than hiding her emotional eyes from his perceptive sight that she is referring mainly to herself here. As she rests her head onto a pillow, rolling onto her back, fingers laced on her stomach, fixing focus up at the arched tent ceiling as if stargazing, he gets the feeling there is a lot more to her words than their surface values. And this makes him feel ... strange.

Maybe the feeling is something like longing.

* * *

**TBC**


End file.
